I seem to have finally reached a goal that had eluded me for years. That is not to say I actively and systemically pursued it. But it was a recurring goal that I could never seem to reach. All I wanted was to live stream the street scene outside Tom’s apartment with audio overlay from one of my Shoutcast streams. OBS, the bloated but useful video streaming software was fun at first, but such a memory hog inevitably crashed and burned after 10-12 hours. I’m running things off a mini-pc which has a decent amount of resource but OBS can crash out on even the phattest machine.
I tried other things. VLC seemed promising but it seems not to support RTMP, only RTSP, at least not without some crazy workarounds. I should add that one part of the goal is to also stream live to Youtube 24/7. Youtube doesn’t do RTSP.
I ended up with a low-impact batch file that uses command line ffmpeg switches to stream both the RTMP video and the Shoutcast audio into one single stream. It’s beautiful. Previously the CPU was continuously at 100%. Now it peaks and pops at 70-something %.
Anyway, blahblahblah, as of now I have it working at last, and in addition to the live stream I am automatically recording all of it and, after I finish it off, I’ll have a thing that automagically concatenates all those files into 24-hour blobs. It’ll be great. It will change the world, as will my morning shower-cam rituals.
I’ve recorded myself in the shower almost every single day for a few years now. Someone once asked me why and I had too much to talk about. Some of it is frivolous, or what I would call creative thinking. Creative thinking tends to be pretty wishy-washy much of the time until all the weak and exploratory ideas work together to crystallize into something meaningful. Most people will tell you they value creative thinking but most people who say that are liars. To most people creative thinking is a pain in the ass.
But in response to the inquiry I said that having a video resource of myself in my favorite place (the shower) would be useful if something happened in there. I sit when I shower so a slip and fall is less likely than it would be if I stood, as seems to be the norm. But I also imagine that I’m creating a sort of secret library that will be useful to a future generation of forensic analysts who will study the bathing habits of 21st century Americans. They might find me interesting, or they might not, but what they would get from my secret library is actual footage of the acts of bathoing. Most studies of this subject, as far as I know, rely on questionairres and interviews, not actual analysis of how people shower or bathe. I’ve read that many men do not wash their legs. I do. How many people use their shower time for something resembling meditation? I do. How many people masturbate in the shower? I do. I’ve read that many men do not wash their feet or behind their ears. I do. None of this makes me special or unique. It just makes me a potential specimen available for study and analysis.
The likelihood of science gathering ’round my shower habits is minimal. But for real research into the gritty details of exactly what people do in the shower how could science do it any other way?
Funny thing is, the towel on my crotch is black, or maybe dark purple. That’s what the night vision does. I also note from these videos the encroaching mold and filth, which I take care of periodically, and regularly when I have stay-over company. My bathroom is a prime target for decluttering. This image shows only a small part of the problem. It’s hard to explain how it got that way, because I don’t know how it got that way.